Our car wash wants to offer special prices to Uber drivers. How can we verify that they are real Uber drivers?

Thank you!

The Guru Take

Various proofs you can ask for. Here are some examples.

Great question and a great idea! I know there are other car wash owners on this forum, so I’m hoping they can weigh in. I will provide my thoughts and examples however.

Is this a membership the drivers would sign up for? There are various proofs you could ask for especially, because you are providing material benefit to the drivers. You should be able to ask for copies of paperwork from Uber, Lyft, etc.

I don’t think there’d be privacy issues because they are volunteering the information. For example, you can ask them for the 1099 form, i.e. tax paper work every driver receive, that will include the driver’s name and address. The problem with this one is that no new drivers would have it.

In some regions, drivers must have a license or special registrations to operate their rideshares or taxis. For example, there’s the TLC license for New York City and special inspection results for Philadelphia.

I know of online communities that ask for screenshots from the Uber Driver App, say the one of the driver profile page where there’s a star rating. This isn’t bulletproof but you could at least check by name.

For you, what if you ask for the vehicle page in the app? That has the license plate number, so you can use that to verify whether the car is eligible for a wash.

If there’s no concept of membership, I think the best you can do is to have every driver show the attendant the Driver App. Your staff would learn the apps quickly and there’re limited ways to fake it.

Comments

Awesome idea. The vehicle page is a good idea. Maybe you don't always have to really check... I feel like most of the time you will be able to tell if someone is trying to scam you. If you spot cheerios on the back seat, probably not an uber driver. Or screaming kids for that matter. Fewer than two phone mounts is cause for suspicion as well 😀